Gerald J. Postema has published extensively in legal and political philosophy and ethics. He earned BA degree from Calvin College (1970) and PhD (1976) from Cornell University. He began his teaching career at Johns Hopkins Unversity (1975-1980). Until his retirement in 2019, he taught philosophy and law at UNC-CH, since 1996 as Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. On October 24, 2016 he was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Athens, Greece. Earlier (2013-14) he served as Arthur L. Goodhart Distinguished Visiting Professor of Legal Science (Cambridge University) and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He received the George J. Johnson Prize for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts and Humanities, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012. He is a former Guggenheim Fellow, Rockefeller Fellow (Bellagio), Medlin Fellow (National Humanities Center), Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, and Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence). On February 20, 2014, he delivered the prestigious Boutwood Lecture at University of Cambridge.
In 2022 he published Law’s Rule: The Nature, Value, and Viability of the Rule of Law (Oxford University Press, 2022). Also published by Oxford: Bentham and the Common Law Tradition, 2nd edition (2019), Chinese translation of 1st edition (2014); Utility, Publicity, and Law: Bentham’s Moral and Legal Philosophy (2019); On the Law of Nature, Reason, and the Common Law: Selected Jurisprudential Writings of Sir Matthew Hale (2017). In 2011 he published Legal Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: The Common Law World (Springer). He has co-edited Handbook of Legal Reasoning and Argumentation (Springer, 2018) and reatise of General Jurisprudence and the Philosophy of Law, associate editor,
12 volumes: volumes 1-5, Springer, 2005; volumes 6-8, Springer, 2007; volumes 9-10, Springer 2009; vol. 11, Springer 2011; vol. 12, Springer, 2016. reatise of General Jurisprudence and the Philosophy of Law, associate editor,
12 volumes: volumes 1-5, Springer, 2005; volumes 6-8, Springer, 2007; volumes 9-10, Springer 2009; vol. 11, Springer 2011; vol. 12, Springer, 2016.Treatise of General Jurisprudence and the Philosophy of Law, 12 volumes (Springer, 2005-2016). He also edited two volumes of critical essays on Bentham, Jeremy Bentham: Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy (2002); Philosophy and the Law of Torts (2001); and Rationality, Conventions, and the Law (1998); and Racism and the Law (1997). From 1997 to 2006 he edited the series Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Law and before that he edited with Michael Corrado the journal Law & Philosophy. Currently, with Kenneth Ehrenberg and George Pavlakos, he is co-editor of Cambridge Elements: Philosophy of Law (Cambridge University Press).
Thomas Bustamante and Thiago Lopes Decat edited a collection of essay in his honor, Philosophy of Law as an Integral Part of Philosophy: Essays on the Jurisprudence of Gerald J. Postema (Hart, 2020).
Sample publications: “Moral Responsibility in Professional Ethics,” New York University Law Review (1980); “Coordination and Convention at the Foundations of Law,” Journal of Legal Studies (1982); “‘Protestant’ Interpretation and Social Practices,” Law & Philosophy (1987); “Answering Hume’s Sensible Knave,” History of Philosophy Quarterly (1988); “Public Practical Reason: An Archeology,” Social Philosophy & Policy (1995); “Integrity: Justice in Workclothes,” Iowa Law Review (1997); “Objectivity Fit for Law,” Objectivity in Law and Morals (2000); “Classical Common Law Jurisprudence [Parts I and II],” Oxford University Journal of Commonwealth Law (2002, 2003); “Melody and Law’s Mindfulness of Time,” Ratio Juris (2004); “Cemented with Diseased Qualities,” Hume Studies (2006); “A similibus ad similia: Analogical Thinking in Law,” Common Law Theory (2007); “Salience Reasoning,” Topoi (2008); “Δίκαιο, συμϐάσεις, φιλοσοφία καί τζάζ,” [“Justice, conventions, philosophy and jazz”], a conversation with Konstantinos Papageorgiou, ΝΕΑ ΕΣΤΙΑ (2011); “Custom, Practice, and the Law,” Duke Law Review (2012); “Law’s Rule: Reflexivity, Mutual Accountability, and the Rule of Law,” in Bentham’s Theory of Law and Public Opinion, 2014; “Fidelity in Law’s Commonwealth,” in Private Law and the Rule of Law (2014); “Law’s System: The Necessity of System in Law,” in New Zealand Law Review (2014); “Jurisprudence as a Sociable Science,” Virginia Law Review (2015); “Trust, Distrust, and the Rule of Law,” in Fiduciaries and Trust: Ethics, Politics, Economics and Law (2019); “Time in Law’s Domain” Ratio Juris (2018); “Failing Democracy,” in NOMOS LXII: Democratic Failure (2020); “Constitutional Norms—Erosion, Sabotage and Response,” Ratio Juris (2022).
Law’s Rule: The Nature, Value, and Viability of the Rule of Law (OUP 2022)
Selected publications and recent work can be found in one of these sites
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/gjp_phil-law_2022
https://ssrn.com/author=332996
https://unc.academia.edu/GeraldPostema
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gerald_Postema/contributions